Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Originally Posted by EdKra

I have no reason not to give you the whole story.

We'll just agree to disagree on that.

Originally Posted by EdKra

Why is that? While you do have the truth from me, you obviously don't have the whole story because that would probably take a 200 page book to convey. There was a 1 year investigation and no criminal wrongdoing was found. That's what's important. Everything else is irrelevant in relation to us.

Agreeing not to bring charges in exchange for some assets and who knows what else is not the same as not finding any criminal wrongdoing.

If you did not agree to forfeit the property, you would have been forced to go to court.

Originally Posted by EdKra

In essence, in a civil asset forfeiture case, the government makes a claim on assets alleging that those assets were involved in criminal activity. This happens a lot with vehicles used to transport drugs or illegal goods. For example, if John borrows Tom's car to deliver drugs to Susan, Tom's car can be seized and later "arrested in REM" by the government since it was used in the crime, even though Tom had no idea that the crime was taking place or that it ever did take place. In turn, Tom needs to go to court and fight a lengthy legal battle which would be titled something along the lines of "US Government Vs. Tom's Car" to prove against a preponderance of evidence that he was unbeknownst to the fact the car was going to be used in a crime. Tom isn't accused of a crime, but his assets are essentially accused as being part of the crime. The August 21st asset forfeiture case is against a small portion of our assets, as it says in the header of the claim. It doesn't say "DOJ Vs. OUR NAMES" but rather "US Government vs. certain assets".

In order to make your analogy relevant, please tell us what crime your rental property was allegedly used to commit.

According to your claim, if the DOJ determined and admitted that Tom was innocent they would still keep his car. Maybe if John bought Tom the car with drug money.

If the DOJ determined that you were innocent, they would have released all of your assets.

Instead, they were willing to go to court to prove that the asset seizure was justified.

In order to avoid court and a potential loss there that would have opened you up to so many more possible issues down the road, all you guys had to do was give up an asset(and maybe some info) that was purchased with money made via your fraud forums or whatever other kind of seedy **** you guys may have been into.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

You would only agree to lose the money if you had committed a crime ...

I don't want to go into details about amounts and such for personal privacy reasons, but answer me this one question.

If for example the government was seizing $125k and your attorneys stated that if you take those assets to Trial, which you'd likely win, but there was a possibility you could lose and they could take even more (civil trial is only won by a preponderance of evidence, 51% chance of the assets being guilty of criminal involvement vs 99.9% of guilt in criminal trials), and that fighting in court would likely cost between $100k and $150k, while taking up to 2 years, What would you choose? Also note that both our wives were pregnant at the time and the amount of time we would have required to spend accounting for every penny we made since 2003, in order to defend ourselves, would have taken literally thousands of hours. To us the decision was an easy one. One we hated to make, because we realized people may view it as an admission of guilt. But in the long run it was the best possible move for us.

Okosh, I respect your opinion, but you are judging me without knowing anywhere close to all of the facts. This is much larger than a simple investigation of us. In the whole scheme of things we are like the microscopic organisms walking on the backs of elephants, when the investigation is centered on a crime committed by the Universe.

If you did not agree to forfeit the property, you would have been forced to go to court.

Yes we would have been, but not on Criminal charges. We would have had to go to federal civil court.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

They kept his boat for six months without ever charging him with any crime.

Major bummer for your friend, Eagle. Sorry he went through that.

Let's try to relate that to the story we're being fed by EdKra here.

During that 6 months, was your friend spending thousands in legal fees to win the boat back or did he just bite the bullet and let the investigation play out?

After the feds determined that he was innocent of all wrongdoing, did he have to forfeit any other assets in order for them to agree not to pursue charges? Or did they just release his boat back to him and sorry, our bad.

According to EdKra's big steaming pile of BS, even if they determine and admit that you did nothing wrong, you still have to pay up or they'll take you to court.

Originally Posted by EagleOne

As for Brian and Edward's case, we only know what we know. But asset forfeiture is used wrongly in many cases, and there needs to be a better way of asset seizure, especially if someone has no prior history of criminal activity, associations with criminals, or suspicious activities.

Yep, so many flaws in the system. Sounds like they definitely got it wrong in the story you related, but they probably had it right in the case this thread pertains to.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

This will likely be my last post here. I came just to clear up an article that was incorrectly written about us. These are the Facts. The Government did NOT charge us with a crime, therefore they do not view us as criminals in any way. We made a financial decision based off of a very similar situation as the one I described here:

If for example the government was seizing $125k and your attorneys stated that if you take those assets to Trial, which you'd likely win, but there was a possibility you could lose and they could take even more (civil trial is only won by a preponderance of evidence, 51% chance of the assets being guilty of criminal involvement vs 99.9% of guilt in criminal trials), and that fighting in court would likely cost between $100k and $150k, while taking up to 2 years, What would you choose? Also note that both our wives were pregnant at the time and the amount of time we would have required to spend accounting for every penny we made since 2003, in order to defend ourselves, would have taken literally thousands of hours. We could instead use that time, like we have, to make up the amount lost in under 6 months. To us the decision was an easy one. One we hated to make, because we realized people may view it as an admission of guilt. But in the long run it was the best possible move for us.

That's all I really have left to say. You guys can twist and turn things as you wish and claim the opposite of reality is true. It doesn't really matter. In the end, this was a much larger animal then simply a website selling advertising space. We were merely a stepping stone of sorts for information that may lead to others. If you think the Government is wasting time on that when there are criminals out there stealing millions or even billions of dollars, you need to wake up.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Oh, one final thing.... These are all the PAID Adwords ads I was able to find on Google alone in the last 6 months for 'HYIPs". Enjoy!! TG/MMg made up 10% of our total business. I have run and still run literally dozens of sites across all industries, and sell ads indiscriminately just like everyone else on the net. Also note that we extensively used Adsense on Both TG and MMG. Yes, Google was feeding HYIP Ads like these directly to our sites. In fact, a large portion of ads on our site were actually placed there by Google. We had no control over removal of specific Google ads, therefore the direct ad sale model was best for protecting members, as we'd remove any ads that were deemed scams. In fact over this period we pinpointed 15 confirmed non-paying HYIPs and submitted complaints to Google and not one was removed in a timely fashion

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

During that 6 months, was your friend spending thousands in legal fees to win the boat back or did he just bite the bullet and let the investigation play out?

After the feds determined that he was innocent of all wrongdoing, did he have to forfeit any other assets in order for them to agree not to pursue charges? Or did they just release his boat back to him and sorry, our bad.

According to EdKra's big steaming pile of BS, even if they determine and admit that you did nothing wrong, you still have to pay up or they'll take you to court.

Yep, so many flaws in the system. Sounds like they definitely got it wrong in the story you related, but they probably had it right in the case this thread pertains to.

Actually he did spend over $100,000 in legal fees to get his boat back, and the government was fighting him getting his boat back. I didn't include it in the post because I was merely pointing out how the government can act under the asset seizure laws. And yes, while this case is similar to Ed and Brian, they are distinct on their own merits and totally different in so many ways.

EagleOne
Founder/President Eagle Research Associateshttp://eagleresearchassociates.org
Author: "Robbing You With A Keyboard Instead Of A Gun - Cyber Crime How They Do It" available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com
Lifetime Member of the National Association of Distinguished Professionals

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Just because the government has stated at this time that Brian and Edward are not going to be charged criminally, does not mean that they can't change their minds in the future should new evidence come to light that would warrant charges.

The real money for Brian and Edward is in the databases for MMG and TG. What a gold mine they would be for someone wanting to start a Ponzi. Also makes me wonder if they had to give them up to the Feds to avoid criminal charges.

EagleOne
Founder/President Eagle Research Associateshttp://eagleresearchassociates.org
Author: "Robbing You With A Keyboard Instead Of A Gun - Cyber Crime How They Do It" available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com
Lifetime Member of the National Association of Distinguished Professionals

According to them these "investment" websites were marginal among the 80 websites they managed, and were used to warn user of potential scams : without the forums scammers would have had just to buy Google ads.

Of course it sounds ridiculous, but 5 years from now who will still know of Talkgold and MMG ?

According to them these "investment" websites were marginal among the 80 websites they managed, and were used to warn user of potential scams : without the forums scammers would have had just to buy Google ads.

Of course it sounds ridiculous, but 5 years from now who will still know of Talkgold and MMG ?

The problem with that story is that they kept banning the "naysayers" that WERE actually warning about the scams!

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

The problem with Brian and Edward was they tried to walk the tightrope between the Ponzi programs and their pimps and us trolls, naysayers, haters, or whatever name that was conjured up to call us because we were exposing their Ponzi's. The Ponzi programs were paying good money to advertise on TG and MMG. They didn't like it that they would not ban us that were exposing their Ponzi's. So they had warnings issued to placate the advertisers somewhat, would block some of us for a week or two, or when the heat got too much we were banned. Brian and Ed were between a rock and a hard place. While they needed the advertising dollars from the Ponzi Programs, they knew we were driving traffic to their site which allowed them to charge more for their advertising.

The other problem they had was their mods at TG. The vast majority of the mods were in the programs that they were supposed to be moderating that particular thread. And of course if we started getting into their pocketbook by them losing money from the Ponzi, then the banning and warnings intensified. In short you had Stalin, Hitler and Mao running the show while trying to claim they were neutral. They deleted posts they didn't like or moved the post to the war zone never to be heard or seen again; and then tried to claim they didn't delete posts or move posts. They would get caught in their own lie and then lie that they didn't lie. Too funny.

You can trace the decline of TG to two specific events: The major one was banning Okosh and littleroundman. The other one was the witch hunt they did after banning me and banning people because they thought they were part of Eagle. What was ironic is that not one of the people they banned were part of Eagle, but we had members of our team posting there and they never found them.

You can go back and see their traffic plummet when these two events happened. Even though they later rescinded many of the banned posters they thought were part of Eagle, it was too late and many never went back. I have to admit that of the two forums, MMG was a lot more tolerant and receptive of all posters unlike TG.

EagleOne
Founder/President Eagle Research Associateshttp://eagleresearchassociates.org
Author: "Robbing You With A Keyboard Instead Of A Gun - Cyber Crime How They Do It" available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com
Lifetime Member of the National Association of Distinguished Professionals

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Have you seen this self serving story they wrote for an online news service.
It details how they were victimized by the big bad evil government and they didn’t even know what they could have done that was wrong.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

[/

Originally Posted by Gregg

Have you seen this self serving story they wrote for an online news service.
It details how they were victimized by the big bad evil government and they didn’t even know what they could have done that was wrong.

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Originally Posted by EdKra

I don't want to go into details about amounts and such for personal privacy reasons, but answer me this one question.

If for example the government was seizing $125k and your attorneys stated that if you take those assets to Trial, which you'd likely win, but there was a possibility you could lose and they could take even more (civil trial is only won by a preponderance of evidence, 51% chance of the assets being guilty of criminal involvement vs 99.9% of guilt in criminal trials), and that fighting in court would likely cost between $100k and $150k, while taking up to 2 years, What would you choose? ...<snip> ...

"In a civil asset forfeiture complaint filed last August, Homeland Security Special Agent Michael Adams wrote that the brothers were paid huge sums by online scammers engaged in illegal activities"

'There is reasonable cause,' the threshold of proof for federal asset forfeiture claims, 'to believe that the Krassensteins would have known that these funds were criminally derived,' Adams claimed. 'There is also reasonable cause to believe that... Brian and Edward Krassenstein have conspired to commit wire fraud'."

“In reality,” he wrote, “the apparent community of HYIP sites was the product of a concerted effort by the Krassensteins, designed to ensure a continuous supply of new HYIP fraud victims and the continued enrichment of Brian Krassenstein, Edward Krassenstein, and their co-conspirators.”
"The government eventually seized $450,000 from them"

"Ed Krassenstein, the brother with the larger Twitter following, built up that following as a Justin Bieber fan account, before converting it to its current, eponymous iteration. One of the brothers took to a web forum in early 2017 to offer payment in bitcoin for Twitter accounts with more than 40,000 followers"

"No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people" - H. L. Mencken

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Did Brian Krassenstein and Ed Krassenstein take down Talkgold.com and moneymakergroup.com because the feds either asked them to or ordered them to?

or

Did Brian Krassenstein and Ed Krassenstein take down Talkgold.com and moneymakergroup.com because Facebook had lured away most of the scammers and their ad revenue and the sites were no longer the money machines that made them millionaires?

or

Did Brian Krassenstein and Ed Krassenstein take down Talkgold.com and moneymakergroup.com because being identified as the sellers of advertising to the owners of fraudulent Ponzi SCAMS was incompatible with their new careers as anti-Trump Twitter stars with 1.4 million followers between them?

Whatever the reason, it appears that evidence of the original source of their success will be forever enshrined regardless. Twitter user @Fraude_1 compiled a concise and compelling synopsis of what Talkgold and Moneymakergroup were all about:

"No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people" - H. L. Mencken

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Brian is back to scamming again...(yea I know he never stopped)...
MMG now redirects to hyip dot com...
Brian owns the domain... (was a thread about it at tg when he tried to sell it for 10k...was in the folders only upgraded memvers could see...we all laughed at the price!!)...
Mods have a green light to scam it would seem...

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Well, one thing is for sure. HYIP.com is no TalkGold. Not even close. I realize it is new, but they should have had more links and threads than they do. So far some of the most cheezy fake bitcoin trading companies going. If they want this to succeed they are going to have to up their game 1,000%.

EagleOne
Founder/President Eagle Research Associateshttp://eagleresearchassociates.org
Author: "Robbing You With A Keyboard Instead Of A Gun - Cyber Crime How They Do It" available in soft cover and eBook at Amazon.com
Lifetime Member of the National Association of Distinguished Professionals

Re: History Bits from TalkGold

Pretty accurate timeline but the @Fraude_1 is wrong about the Krassenstein's owning MMG in 2003 along with TG. They didn't buy MMG until several years later and at one time they were indeed competing forums. EDIT: also, egold founders are not doing prison time, they got probation+community service.

Of the three scenarios of why they shut both down, "B" seems the most likely along with the some pressure from "A" causing the risk vs. reward to be highly skewed towards more money being lost/seized/fined away than profit to be made.

Now what the hell they are doing with laughably bad hyip.com is beyond me. Looks like they decided to give a domain to a bunch of Ukrainian scammers to play with.